Mountain Climbing Entries
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Pedaling Upstream
Sunday, May 9th, 2010With everything we needed to thrive at our hard-to-reach Romanian forest free camp, we almost decided to stay another day. Instead, we packed up, said hello to some horses grazing in a nearby pastur...
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Macro Love
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Flowers make me happy. I don't care if it is cliché, they just do! When we got our first camera I was thrilled when I realized I could finally capture the beauty I see in them. When we get home I...
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Donkey Day
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Leaving cities is always hard. There is inevitably some navigation difficulty, as well as a handful of surprises like one-way streets, delivery trucks taking entire lanes, people double-parked hapha...
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Celebrating Sunday
Sunday, February 14th, 2010I would never have imagined this to be true, but many of our favorite days involve slowly climbing mountains. As long as we bring copious amounts of food, start the day with a positive attitude, and...
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Wet and Cold
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010A sickly drizzle of freezing rain patiently waited to receive us this morning. As we stuffed ourselves during our last continental breakfast at the Grand Hotel in Potenza, we were blissfully unaware...
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Rags to Riches
Sunday, January 24th, 2010Walking into the four-star Grande Albergo hotel in Potenza's charming shop-lined cobblestone downtown was quite the experience-- a real example of how polar our trip can be at times. There we were, ...
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Brrrrrrr
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010In an odd change of perspective, every climb was cause for celebration today (and there were plenty of them: 800 meters, or over 2,500 feet in all). In lieu of hopping around madly trying to keep wa...
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Climbing in the Cold
Friday, January 22nd, 2010The day didn't start out very cold. In fact, the first twenty five kilometers of our trek east were just beautiful; much flatter than I expected they would be too! We cruised through non-stop civil...
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Field Recording
Thursday, January 21st, 2010During yesterday's ride, we enjoyed the Amalfi scenery on our second trip through it's unforgettable coastline. Though it provided spectacular views once more, we'd forgotten how mountainous the are...
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Amalfi Again
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010When Tyler expressed his desire to return what I call "the tunnel from hell" to do some recording, I was torn. On one hand, I was excited that he'd finally be able to capture the bizarrely intense d...
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Autumn in the Mountains
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009Our frosty free camp at 1,400m (4,500ft) was so cold we blew off our 5:30am alarm this morning. Cuddled in our toasty warm tent we hoped the sun would come out sooner rather than later. It didn't. ...
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Run-Ins
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Our first run-in of the day was with a man in an ANAS van (the Italian highway maintenance service) shortly after leaving our seaside free camp. He stopped us about 10km into a long ascent and did h...
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Feeling Capable
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009When we groggily awoke to rain pattering on our tent roof, we promptly rolled over, slept in, and let nature run its course. Thankfully by 9AM the gray sheet of clouds had drifted out to sea, taking...
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South for Winter
Sunday, October 18th, 2009We've been contemplating several different routing possibilities to wrap up our tour of Italy for several days now. Today, as we approached the point where the roads diverged and decision-making bec...
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Climbing Elba
Saturday, September 26th, 2009Elba Island is one part collapsed mountain, one part volcanic remains. The resulting landscape, while stunning, is quite a workout on a fully loaded touring bicycle. Directly out our front do...
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Volterra and the Sea
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009A brilliant golden light filtered through the trees this morning but I was far too comfy in our tent to get up and take a picture. I will just have to commit the morning splendor to memory. Quickly...
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Conquering Julierpass
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009Today is the big day; our highest mountain climb ever will take us over Julierpass! For breakfast, I make us a large pot of muesli with cooked apples to keep us well fueled. Feeling full, we hit th...
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Ascending & Descending
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009We said farewell to Chur under overcast skies, thankful for the gray cloud cover that would hopefully stick around and protect us from the sun. A long sweaty day of climbing is a lot more enjoyable ...
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Unexpected Climb
Monday, August 10th, 2009We left the campsite today cheerfully, feeling as though we'd done Zermatt justice. In just a few days we'd managed to do quite a bit: taking in a festival, riding cable cars, hiking in the mountain...
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Hiking in the Swiss Alps
Saturday, August 8th, 2009We'd planned on going for a proper hike through the mountains today but when we awoke to the sound of rain on our tent, we had second thoughts. For most of the morning we hemmed and hawed through th...
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Climbing to Zermatt
Thursday, August 6th, 2009After a long crepe-making/eating session this morning (in preparation for our mountain climb), we hit the road and headed into the town of Visp. As we left our campground the bicycle lane we enjoyed...
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Changing Scenery
Saturday, July 18th, 2009Today was our last day in the mountains for the next few weeks. I expected we'd have an easy ride with a short pass to climb somewhere in the middle of the day and then we'd be home-free. Boy was I...
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Gorgeous Climbs
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009After sleeping in rather late this morning we packed up our river-side free camp and carried our belongings over to a steep embankment leading to the road. Once we were mostly prepared, we took the ...
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Helvellyn Ascent
Monday, April 27th, 2009As the morning wore on, the clouds cleared a bit and it was starting to look like we might have a nice day ahead of us. Tara's cramps were subsiding so we decided the day would be much better spent ...